Aftermath
by marauderX
Summary: Teddy deals with the aftermath of Victoire's decision.
1. All The Things

I will remember you by your hair; the way it swung behind you as you walked, the way it tangled in my fingers when I kissed you hard, the way it frustrated you in the mornings because it never would stay straight.

I will remember you by your eyes; the way they sparkled in the sun, the way they drew me in even if we were across a room, the way you used them to get your way.

I will remember you by your nose; the way you crinkled it up when you got frustrated, the way it bumped into mine when we sometimes kissed.

I will remember you by your lips; the way they moved when you talked in such a tantalizing way, the way they felt against my own, the way you bit them when you were nervous.

I will remember you voice; the way it sounded when you reprimanded me for not taking off my shoes when I got home from work, the way it sounded when you spoke in hushed whispers when we were hiding in broom cupboards from your overbearing mother, the way it whispered my name.

I will remember you by your neck; the way it felt under my mouth, the way the necklaces I bought you fit perfectly, the way it always felt right whenever I needed comfort.

I will remember you by your arms; the way they wrapped around me tightly when you thought I needed a hug, the way they moved when you danced.

I will remember you by your hands; the way the feeling of your fingers against my skin made me shiver, the way they grasped at my face when we kissed, the way they fit perfectly in my own.

I will remember you by your hips; the way my hands always fit perfectly on them; the way they moved when you walked, the way they arched up when you were lying on your side in a way that you knew I liked.

I will remember you by your legs; the way they moved gracefully as you walked, the way they looked in those short skirts you wore when you wanted to drive me crazy, the way they felt under my fingers.

I will remember you by your feet; the way they curled against my legs when you were cold at night, the way you painted your toenails every different colour because you thought it was pretty.

I will remember you by the way you cooked eggs, always adding in a little bit of hot sauce when you thought I wouldn't notice. I will remember you by the way you looked at me as if I was the only one you loved. I will remember you by your laugh and your songs and the love you gave to me. I will remember you by your snore and your protests that you don't snore.

I will remember you as Victoire, my Victoire, instead of the corpse you chose to be.


	2. Empty House

I walk across the threshold, the ghost of our first time doing so as a married couple haunting me. I walk by the dresser in the front hall, the framed photographs of you teasing me, offering me a glimpse at what once was. Dust has settled over them since I have not been back since I found you, but I can't bring myself to clean them.

To do so would bring my eyes to your flawless face and those wondrous eyes that make me shiver just by looking at them.

So I continue on, past the kitchen where you used to make me eggs and pancakes, and where I would make you apple pies just like your grandmother taught me how to do. I walk past the sitting room where the piano you always wanted sits tauntingly. I will never set my hands on those keys again, but I know I will never be able to bear selling it. I take the stairs two at a time, not wanting to spend too much time near the photographs you perfectly hung up, every frame as straight as can be.

But even without looking at them, I know them by heart.

The first of five is a photograph of us at our wedding. You're twirling in your white dress and I'm off to the side, the look of a man who cannot believe that he has just married the closest thing he has ever gotten to an angel on my face.

The second is a photograph of our family at the annual Weasley-Potter Christmas from when we were kids. Half of your cousins weren't yet born and you and I were front and center, your face pinching into a frown as my little hand raced up to tug on one of your pigtails.

The third is one that your cousin Rose took for a photography project in Muggle Studies. It is just our silhouettes, and although we're not doing anything but leaning our foreheads against each other behind the dark curtain, but it has always been my favourite.

The fourth is a photograph of you, your graduation photo after finally becoming a Healer. The last is almost identical to this one, except that it's me and I have just become an auror.

I know that I will soon have to take them down, all the photos tainted with memories of you that will cause me grief should I look at them for a second. And so I go past our room, where I found you, your pretty little wrists scared by what you had done. I go instead to the room next to it that we painted yellow together and I sit in the chair we have put in the corner. I look around at the changing table and the crib, and the stuffed animals I bought the first time we thought we were expecting.

And I sit there for hours, wishing that I had one last thing to remember you by.


	3. Mournful Song

The pictures have been put away, only a select few remaining. Our room has been wiped clean of anything that is yours, and it is all down in the cellar in a trunk that I leave closed. The baby room has been turned into a study and the kitchen has been redone. The only thing that remains untouched is the baby grand in the sitting room.

The last time you used it was to teach me a song that your mother had taught you when you were young.

 _C, C, E, G.  
A, A, C, E.  
F, F, A, C.  
G, G, B, D._

My hands shake and the keys sound like they need to be tuned, but the repetition of this song creates a melancholy sound that I long for. I long to hear the sounds the piano made when your little fingers danced across the keys, the black and the white becoming less instrumental pieces and more extensions of your soul, singing to me once more.

But even music does not extend beyond the grave to link those on earth and those beyond it. So I continue to play and my fingers begin to shake less, and the song rings through the house until the doorbell truly rings. I stop playing and realize what I have been doing, but before I can truly contemplate it, I am at the door, distracting myself.

The peephole shows white blond hair that I recognize. I let Dominique in and there are tears in her eyes.

 _You sound like she did,_ she says, her voice shaking. _I thought for a moment…_

I look down as I realize what she thought. But no matter how similar the notes on the piano may sound when your light fingers prance across them and when my quick jabs force them down, we both know that her hopeful thinking is foolish.

 _I brought this,_ she says and holds out a basket.

Your mother has been sending these once a week since the incident. I think that baking helps her keep her mind off of you. I take the basket from your sister and place it down next to your piano. I thank her and she makes to leave before turning back to me, smiling sadly.

 _She would have wanted you to be happy,_ she says, reaching out to pat my arm. _And I know you can't do that right now, but maybe when you feel like you can, think of the good times. The happy times. It works for me._

I nod and Dominique leaves, the door closing behind her allowing me to sink to the ground. She doesn't know how hard it is to have her in the house you used to occupy. The ghost of you clings to her; to her hair, to her eyes, to the way she scrunches her nose up when she's frustrated.

But as I think of what she says I decide to think of the good times.

The happy times.


	4. Selfish Man

I remember the time I brought you to that muggle amusement park on our third date, and you were weary of the large machinery that wasn't powered by magic. You had screamed on the rollercoasters and dug your fingernails into my hands until there were red marks that wouldn't leave for days, but you loved them. You loved the rush of wind through your hair, you told me later. You loved the feeling of falling without ever knowing when or if you would hit the ground. I suppose now that you were telling me something that I couldn't piece together until now.

I remember our wedding night, when we were alone at last and you giggled as I traced the most ticklish parts of your body, not wanting to hear you sigh my name because your laugh was so much more vibrant than that. Your wedding gown, a dress you had spent months picking out, was discarded on the floor like an old rag. Later you had asked me if I could love another if you passed on. I had replied that I would, but never in the same way. You told me you wouldn't be mad if I did. I wish I had listened more carefully then.

I remember the night we went camping in the backyard, with the roof of the tent made see through with our wands so that the stars would shine down upon us. Your face glowed with delight and you told me that when you were younger you would look up at the stars and hope to join them, looking down on the people of earth, not a care to be had. Maybe if I had paid more attention, I wouldn't be hoping for the same thing for you right now.

The happy times might work for Dominique but I cannot stand them. You linger in all my memories, your final decision tainting all of the good with the prevalent black stench of death. Your face turns pale whenever I think of you now, your lips become chalky. Even in memories your loss has not escaped me.

And even though I will put on a brave face and pretend that I am now at peace to appease our loved ones, the truth is, there will always be a dark spot in my heart that withers away no matter how hard I try to sustain it. You burden me with this decaying heart because you couldn't handle the suffering this world gave you.

But I am selfish and I will covet my suffering because it links me to you. I will always wonder if part of your heart was withering away, clawing at you and dragging you down into the abyss as it is doing to me. I will always cherish the ever constant impact you have on me, even from beyond the grave.

Because I am a selfish man and I will hold onto your ghost to appease myself instead of letting you go.


	5. One Year

I stare at the cold, grey stone, tracing the letters of your name over and over as if somehow it might bring you back to me.

Your absence still keeps me awake at night, tossing and turning and wishing that there was someone else I could hold on to. I still feel incomplete in the kitchen, like there should be someone I need to avoid because they're holding a hot kettle for tea, or a pan of piping pancakes. The piano has been collecting dust because every time I tried to play it I could still see your hands guiding mine along the black and white keys.

It's been a year and our house is no happier than that first day I came back to it. But I think I'm starting to be.

I have gone back to work and it helps me think of other things. Your Uncle George managed to get me to help coach little Roxanne's mini quidditch team and it helps me think of other things. Dominique and I have brunch every Sunday and it helps me think of other things.

But it's the times when I'm not thinking of other things that I turn back to you and I break all over again. You have left me shattered on the floor with no way to pick myself up again, the pieces of me struggling to get back together to no avail. I used to want you back, to hold you once more. I would still do anything to hold you one last time, to kiss you for one last time, to tell you that I love you with all my heart and soul, but now I have begun to realize that in my attempt to hold on to your ghost, I have let my life be consumed by your tragedy. Your suffering clings to me.

It's been one year and I can still see you in this house. It's been twelve months and I can still hear the memory of your voice. It's been three hundred and sixty five days and I can still feel the ghost of your hand in mine. But now it is my time to start living again.

I will go out and watch the sunrises and the sunsets, I will buy ice cream on hot summer days, and I will listen to music while cleaning the house. And I will live like you can't, and hopefully along the way you can live through me, through the memories I preserve.

It's been one year and I can still feel the whisper of your kiss. I hope you meant it when you said you wouldn't be mad if I loved another after you passed on, because I meant it when I said that I would but in a different way. It's been one year and I can still feel the whisper of your lips, but I am tired of whispers and memories and ghosts.

It is time for me to live again.


	6. Blue Star

It's been years since I visited you last. I've made good on my promise to live again. I go to work and I can smile again when Auror Mason cracks a joke. I go out to brunch with Dominique every second Sunday and we laugh and we eat and we toast to you. I started going to that little coffee shop you love that always put ice skating chocolate snowmen on your hot chocolates, and there I met Cara.

Cara is not you. She's a little shorter, a little heavier, her hair is brown, her eyes are a darker blue than yours, she's never played quidditch because she's scared of heights, but she loves it and is a photographer with _Seeker Weekly_.

I've made good on my other promise too; of loving someone after you but in a different way.

You were a blue star, Victoire. Our love was hot and burned bright, but it fizzled out too fast when you decide to leave this earth.

Cara is an ocean, calm one day, with the sparkles of the sea in her eyes, but fierce as a tidal wave. Sometimes I find myself in the centre of the hurricane with her, the world around me turned upside down.

I once painted your bright blue light all over the walls of our house and the walls of my heart, but now I paint her soft curved waves and the muted whites of her waves crashing on the rocks that you left when my world crumbled. She has moved in, you see, and she has left herself on almost everything you once had, her fingers tracing so lightly on the keys of your piano that I long for her to play me a song every day, mostly because I love her melodies, but also because even though she's so different, she reminds me of you.

I have come back not to visit you once more and crawl my way back into the abyss I found myself in when you left, but to tell you I have finally found my way out, and Cara was a rung in my ladder. I hope you understand Victoire, as you told me you would, when I tell you my plans, because this ring in my pocket is branding me, reminding me that I will always be married to you. So this is my goodbye, my theoretical divorce.

You were my blue star, but you are gone, the light of my life gone. I will never forget you, Victoire, but I have begun to live and this is the last string attaching me to you. In Cara's ocean you are an anchor, trying to sink to the bottom and not realizing you are still dragging me down with you. This is the start of a new life and by letting you go I can finally stop drowning. I am here to sever that last string, Victoire, and for your blessing.

I hope you would give it to me.

* * *

 **A.N.: And I'm done! This was a story I wrote to cope with a recent loss, and now that I'm done I feel a little bit better. Teddy lived through emotions that I lived through, so writing everything down kind of helping the healing process for me. If you haven't noticed, I tried to make each chapter 500 words each. Microsoft Word said I did it although the word counters here at HPFF didn't, but I guess it's the thought that counts.**

 **I hope you liked it and I would love some feedback! That little grey box down there gets a little lonely, so make it feel less lonely? In any case, thank you for making it this far and for reading my pretty lengthy author's note.**


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